President Donald Trump boasted on Monday that his hosting of a military parade in Washington, D.C., next month to honor the Army’s 250th anniversary — coincidentally the same date as his 79th birthday — was an act of divine intervention.

“We’re going to have a big, big celebration, as you know, 250 years,” he said during a Memorial Day speech at Arlington National Cemetery. “Can you imagine? I missed that four years, and now look what I have, I have everything. Amazing the way things work out. God did that.”

The massive military parade and related festivities planned for June 14 will cost an estimated $25 to $45 million, according to the Army. This is likely a significant underestimate due to many expenses that are unaccounted for – or will be billed later, such as damages to local infrastructure caused by armored vehicles. Members of Congress are already expressing outrage at what they see as a gross misuse of funds.

“Trump squandering $45 million in taxpayer dollars on a military parade for his birthday is the epitome of government waste,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. “If the Trump Administration truly cared about celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Army, they would honor past and present soldiers and reinstate the thousands of veterans who they fired from the federal workforce — not throw away millions on an extravagant parade.”

The purpose of the parade is also seemingly up for interpretation. The White House now says the parade is a celebration of the Army’s semiquincentennial after, last month, denying reports that a parade would be held on the president’s birthday. Trump, for his part, has offered shifting explanations, stating that the parade is a celebration of Flag Day, the military writ large, or tanks and other weaponry.

The current plan, nonetheless, involves a martial spectacle reminiscent of the Soviet Union or North Korea in the heart of America’s capital, with armored vehicles rolling down Constitution Avenue. It is slated to involve more than 100 vehicles, including 28 M1A1 Abrams tanks, 28 Stryker armored personnel carriers, 28 Bradley Fighting Vehicles, four M109 Paladin self-propelled howitzers, as well as military relics like World War II-era Sherman tanks, a B-25 bomber, and a P-51 Mustang single-seat fighter plane, according to Army spokesperson Cynthia Smith. She added that the parade will also feature 34 horses, two mules, one wagon, and one dog.

“Join us on June 14th for the U.S. Army’s 250th Anniversary Grand Military Parade on the National Mall! Hosted by President Donald Trump,” reads a White House post on X announcing the event, which will also feature 50 helicopters flying overhead, including Apaches, Black Hawks, and tandem-rotor Chinooks. The White House says that Trump will “deliver remarks celebrating 250 Years of the U.S. Army’s exceptional service, significant achievements, and enduring legacy.”

Trump previously called the price tag of the parade “peanuts compared to the value of doing it.” The White House did not respond to questions about the additional costs beyond those cited by the Army. 

Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., suspects the costs could be markedly higher than the current estimates. “This administration does not have a credible history of telling the truth about anything. And so, when they estimate $45 million, you know that’s a low-ball figure,” he told The Intercept. “I don’t know if it includes transporting the troops from their home stations to Washington or feeding them on that trip.”

Cohen brought up other costs from aircraft flyovers — “How much fuel do they burn up? How much maintenance is required before and after the flight?” — to the construction of stands and viewing platforms on the parade route.

The total burden on taxpayers could also soar higher because the federal government is on the hook to fix city streets and other infrastructure torn up by the armored vehicles (each Abrams tank, for instance, weighs almost 70 tons). “If military tanks were used, they should be accompanied with many millions of dollars to repair the roads,” said D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser in April, adding that tanks rolling through the city’s streets “would not be good.” 

The Army says they have this covered — at taxpayer expense. “As a prevention measure to ensure there are no damages to the roads, one-inch-thick steel plates, varying in size from 4 feet by 8 feet and 8 feet by 20 feet will be placed on the roads at any pivot point and all new rubber tracks will be placed on vehicles,” Heather J. Hagan, an Army spokesperson, told The Intercept. “The federal government would be responsible for any damages.”

Additional expenses, like cleanup and an increased police presence, are also apparently not part of current estimates, although Daniel Gleick, Bowser’s press secretary, was unable to provide projected local costs. The sheer number of agencies the Army is working with, however, speaks to the likelihood of wide-ranging additional expenses. “The Army is coordinating with local law enforcement, National Park Services, District Department of Transportation, Federal Highways Administration, U.S. Park Police, and DC Water, who will assess the roads and bridges,” said Hagan.

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One major expense of the parade to be borne by taxpayers is the cross-country transport of mammoth military vehicles. The Abrams tanks have, for example, already been loaded onto flatbed railcars at an industrial rail yard facility at Fort Cavazos, Texas, for their long journey toward Washington. The tanks will then be trucked to a staging area near the parade route.

The district will also be flooded with close to 7,000 troops. The Army did not want to disclose the locations for force protection reasons, but service members will be housed in the Agriculture Department and General Services Administration buildings, according to Pentagon sources. Contracting materials examined by The Intercept show the Army National Guard is seeking to rent “800 Sleeping Cots in Support of Army 250 Parade in Washington D.C.”

“They’re going to sleep on cots. They’re going to get cots and MREs,” said Smith, the Army spokesperson, referring to “meals ready-to-eat,” the military’s moniker for rations. 

Cohen, the Tennessee representative, also referenced the inclusion of large numbers of National Guard members. “They’ll have to take time from their jobs. And are they being paid by the state extra for this time as being in the National Guard? That’s another expense,” he said.

The Army is also looking into potential lodgings — like hotel rooms or furnished apartments — to house 280 personnel from June 12 to 16 and another 275 personnel from June 13 to 16 near the National Mall. These people will, however, eschew MREs for more sumptuous victuals: a hot breakfast, a bag lunch, and a hot dinner, according to a request for information issued by the Army earlier this month. Smith said she did not have details about this effort. Hagan, the other Army spokesperson, did not have a more granular breakdown of other parade costs.

Trump has Fixated on military parades for decades — and has repeatedly found himself mired in controversy as a result. When he was merely a real estate developer and New York City gadfly, his involvement with the Nation’s Parade, celebrating the Second World War’s 50th anniversary in 1995, sullied “an otherwise positive day,” according to the New York Times. As reporter Robert McFadden observed at the time: “Many veterans were angry that organizers had agreed to name Mr. Trump, who is not a veteran, as grand marshal in exchange for his contribution of $200,000 and help in raising additional funds.”

In 2017, during his first term, Trump watched the Bastille Day parade in Paris with French President Emmanuel Macron and returned home obsessed with staging his own défilé militaire. Plans for a 2018 parade were postponed after local officials in Washington, D.C., raised concerns about damage to the capital city’s streets, the Pentagon tossed up additional roadblocks, and public reports of the estimated $92 million price tag caused the White House to retreat. “When asked to give us a price for holding a great celebratory military parade, they wanted a number so ridiculously high that I cancelled it,” Trump groused in a tweet at the time. “Maybe we will do something next year in D.C. when the cost comes WAY DOWN.”

A top aide to then-Defense Secretary James Mattis wrote that the former general privately said he would “rather swallow acid” than watch Trump’s military spectacle.

Trump seems to have learned lessons from past parade problems and has been deflecting talk of June 14 being a festival in his honor. “Your birthday’s coming up,” NBC News’s Kristen Welker said during a wide-ranging interview with Trump earlier this month. “Yeah,” the president responded. “And there are reports that you’re looking into the possibility of a military —” said Welker, with Trump replying “Yeah” as she said “parade.” But the president immediately walked it back. “Well, my birthday happens to be on Flag Day. So … I think they’re talking about Flag Day. But I view it for Flag Day, not necessarily my birthday,” Trump went on. “It’s Flag Day, plus we’re going to have different days. You know, if you look at Russia, they celebrate Victory Day.”

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Lavish spending on the military parade comes as the Trump administration is requesting $1 trillion for the Pentagon and pursuing massive cuts to nonmilitary programs like housing assistance, education initiatives, environmental programs, and foreign aid. 

Cohen reiterated the need to pass his Halting All Parades for Presidents’ Yearly Birthdays; It Risks Taxpayer Harm, Damages, And Your (HAPPY BIRTHDAY) Budget Act, which he introduced last month. “The egotist-in-chief wants taxpayers to foot the bill for a military parade on his birthday. This would be an unprecedented waste of money to please this self-absorbed con man,” said Cohen, whose legislation would bar public funds from being used for presidential birthday parades. “It also sends the message that Trump is not a king, and we don’t pay tribute to tyrants.”

Despite their opposition to Trump’s military spectacular, both Cohen and Blumenthal emphasized their appreciation for the military. “I strongly support celebrating the Army’s 250 years of service and sacrifice, but in a more appropriate way,” said the senator.

“We all appreciate the Army. We all appreciate the soldiers. We appreciate the veterans. We don’t have to have this parade to do that,” Cohen told The Intercept.

“Even if the parade costs $45 million, that’s a lot of money. And that could feed a lot of kids who are losing SNAP payments,” said Cohen, referencing the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program formerly known as food stamps. “So I think it’s misprioritization of monies. And it just contributes to the whole idea of a fascist state with an authoritarian leader like Mussolini or Hitler.”

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The White House unveiled a barebones budget blueprint last week that would pump more of the federal budget into the Pentagon while taking a chainsaw to education, foreign aid, health care and public assistance programs.

While some analysts claim that the outline, also known as a “skinny budget,” represents a modest cut to Pentagon spending, that fails to take into account the White House’s call for $119 billion in defense spending to be included in a reconciliation bill currently being debated in Congress. With that added to the base budget proposal, which keeps the Pentagon budget at roughly the same $893 billion level as last year, total defense spending would increase by 13 percent to $1 trillion.

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a personal adviser to the president, claimed that he would cut costs at the Pentagon with his minions at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.

Instead, experts say that, if approved, Donald Trump’s bloated Pentagon budget will almost certainly benefit Musk and his company SpaceX with huge new projects.

The first is a missile shield, dubbed the Golden Dome, which is reminiscent of the Reagan-era “Star Wars” missile-defense boondoggle. Trump’s budget plan also calls for an undisclosed flood of funding for “U.S. space dominance to strengthen U.S. national security.” 

“No matter how you slice it, the Pentagon budget is obscenely high at a time when the fundamentals of our diplomatic infrastructure are being decimated, the social safety net is being shredded, and medical and scientific research are under attack,” William Hartung, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told The Intercept. “Add to this that the funds for the Pentagon have as much to do with pork barrel politics and techno-fantasies like the Golden Dome as they do with a sound defense strategy, and it becomes clear that current resources going to the Pentagon are not only excessive but are more likely to undermine than promote our security.”

Trump’s Golden Dome appears to be little more than a warmed-over version of the 1980s Strategic Defense Initiative, a fanciful project that hoped to shoot down Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs, retitled with a name swiped from Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile defense. Its ultimate price tag is estimated in the hundreds of billions or even trillions of dollars.

Musk’s SpaceX has emerged as a front-runner to win crucial parts of the Golden Dome project, which aims to build a network of satellites to detect and track missiles streaking toward the United States. SpaceX not only manufactures rockets that can launch military payloads into space, but also satellites that can provide surveillance and targeting technology. The firm is already the top Pentagon supplier of launch services and low-Earth-orbit communications systems. 

Unlike Israel’s Iron Dome, which defends that tiny country against short-range threats, America’s Golden Dome would need to cover a much larger area against a more challenging range of weapons, including ICBMs and hypersonic missiles. Even if blanketing the United States with these defenses were economically feasible, the technology isn’t.

“The Golden Dome is basically a fantasy,” said Gabe Murphy, a policy analyst at Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan budget watchdog advocating for an end to wasteful spending. Israel’s system needs to defend just 8,500 square miles, while the U.S. system needs to cover 3.8 million. “Physicists say that this technology to defend against ICBMs and hypersonic missiles doesn’t exist. Funneling tens, perhaps hundreds, of billions of dollars into technology with only a faint hope of success is extremely wasteful.”

SpaceX has proposed providing its Golden Dome technology to the Defense Department through a “subscription service,” according to reporting by Reuters. Pentagon officials and experts have expressed concerns about this unusual model for a critical defense program, which runs the risk of leading to cost overruns and a lack of oversight and control over the program.

“With his subscription model plan, Musk is looking to both retain control of these systems and keep taxpayer dollars flowing his way,” said Murphy. “But just like a blue check mark doesn’t make you famous, building 600 to 1,200 satellites doesn’t mean you can actually defend the United States against ICBMs and hypersonic missiles.”

A group of 42 Democratic lawmakers has already called for a review by the Pentagon’s acting inspector general of Musk’s role in the bidding process for the missile defense shield.

“Mr. Musk, in addition to his role at SpaceX, is a Special Government Employee (SGE), Senior Advisor to President Trump, and a key official at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE),” the lawmakers wrote. “Mr. Musk’s formal or informal participation in any process to award a government contract raises serious conflict of interest concerns, including the possibility that SpaceX is a top contender for the Golden Dome contract because of Mr. Musk’s position in the government.” If the inspector general launches an inquiry and finds Musk provided an advantage to SpaceX in the bidding process, the lawmakers requested the findings be referred to the Justice Department for a criminal investigation.

SpaceX broke into major defense contracting through the courts. In 2014, the company sued the Air Force after it awarded a sole-source contract for rocket launches to a Boeing–Lockheed Martin joint venture called United Launch Alliance, arguing that opening the contract up to competition could save the government hundreds of millions of dollars per launch. SpaceX prevailed, and now has, according to many observers, a near-monopoly on the U.S. satellite launch market.

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SpaceX’s chief operating officer Gwynne Shotwell said the company has about $22 billion in government contracts, mostly from NASA. But SpaceX’s deals with the Pentagon have ballooned — totaling almost $8 billion — as it has provided an increasing number of services to the Defense Department. 

NASA is slated for a budget cut under Trump’s plan, but SpaceX is still likely to win big. Trump’s budget blueprint takes aim at the old guard of the military–industrial complex, including the rivals SpaceX displaced to gain its foothold at the Pentagon. Trump is calling for NASA to end funding for the Space Launch System, a massive Boeing and Northrop Grumman rocket, and Lockheed Martin’s Orion astronaut capsule, which was to be employed to take the U.S. back to the moon.

SpaceX recently won an $843 million contract to “de-orbit” the International Space Station when it is retired in 2030. Musk urged Trump to speed up its demise and focus on his own pet project, posting on his own website, X.com: “Let’s go to Mars.” 

To that end, Trump’s cancellation of key parts of NASA’s lunar program allows for a Mars-focused agenda. His budget blueprint also calls for $1 billion in new spending to specifically focus on a mission to the red planet.

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Colonizing Mars has long been one of Musk’s leading obsessions. Cutting the United States out of the equation and violating international law appears to be part of his plan. The terms of service agreement for SpaceX’s Starlink internet service offers up a Wild West vision for that planet:

“For Services provided on Mars, or in transit to Mars via Starship or other spacecraft, the parties recognize Mars as a free planet and that no Earth-based government has authority or sovereignty over Martian activities. Accordingly, Disputes will be settled through self-governing principles, established in good faith, at the time of Martian settlement.”

SpaceX is already taking aim at Mars with its heavy-lift Starship rocket, and Musk is publicly calling for “direct, rather than representative, democracy” on the planet. “The Martians will decide how they are ruled,” he wrote on X late last year. But the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, under which the United Nations declared a set of principles for space, unequivocally states that outer space is “the province of all mankind” and subject to international law.

Trump’s indulgence of Musk’s Martian fantasies with U.S. tax dollars, Musk’s billions in contracts with NASA and the Pentagon, and the additional billions his company stands to reap from Trump’s fantastical Golden Dome project all raise profound pay-to-play issues.

These new contracts and budget priorities are “all coming to a man who spent close to $290 million getting Trump and other Republicans elected. This is an unelected billionaire who is taking a sledgehammer to essential programs for diplomacy and basic support for Americans in need,” Hartung told The Intercept. “The conflict of interest is jaw-dropping, and his power — and how he is wielding it — is obscene.”

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U.S. troops in the Middle East have come under attack close to 400 times, at a minimum, since the outbreak of the Israel–Hamas war, according to figures provided to The Intercept by the Office of the Secretary of Defense and Central Command.

The strikes, predominantly by Iranian-backed militias and the Houthi government in Yemen, include a mix of one-way attack drones, rockets, mortars, and ballistic missiles fired at fixed bases and U.S. warships across the region. These groups ramped up attacks on U.S. targets in October 2023, in response to the U.S.-supported Israeli war on Gaza.

The casualty revelations come as President Donald Trump announced a ceasefire with the Houthis, claiming they had “capitulated” to the United States. “The Houthis have announced — to us, at least — that they don’t want to fight anymore,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday. “We will stop the bombings,” he continued, noting that U.S. attacks would end “immediately.”

Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, a member of the Houthi Supreme Political Council, said the Houthis had not immediately agreed to the U.S.-proposed ceasefire. The Houthis would “evaluate” the U.S. proposal “on the ground first,” he posted on Tuesday.

When asked for clarification regarding Trump’s claims, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said Trump’s remarks were “clear.”

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Houthi strikes on U.S. forces, which began during the Biden administration, continued during Trump’s second term, despite threats that continued attacks would be met with overwhelming force. “To all Houthi terrorists, YOUR TIME IS UP, AND YOUR ATTACKS MUST STOP, STARTING TODAY. IF THEY DON’T, HELL WILL RAIN DOWN UPON YOU LIKE NOTHING YOU HAVE EVER SEEN BEFORE!” Trump ranted on TruthSocial on March 15. Trump then decreed that the Houthis would be “completely annihilated.” In what Trump described as “large-scale strikes in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen,” the U.S. targeted civilian infrastructure and, according to local reports, killed scores of innocent people.

The attacks on Yemen have continued with Israel and the United Kingdom joining in the bombardment. More than a month after Trump’s bellicose boasts, however, the Houthis have continued to strike at U.S. military personnel, just as they and militant groups across the Middle East have done hundreds of times since the beginning of the Gaza war.

U.S. Navy vessels in the region have been the most frequent target, coming under attack 174 times since October 2023, Central Command told The Intercept. There have also been “about 200” attacks on U.S. bases in the region since the Gaza war began, according to Pentagon spokesperson Patricia Kreuzberger. This amounts to roughly one attack every 1.5 days, on average. This includes more than 100 attacks on U.S. outposts in Syria and a lesser number in Iraq and Jordan. A January 2024 drone attack on Tower 22, a facility in the latter country, killed three U.S. troops. 

The Pentagon recently bragged that it had attacked more than 1,000 Houthi targets since March 15, as part of Operation Rough Rider, while denigrating the Houthis’ ability to strike back at the U.S. military. 

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Just last week, a $60 million U.S. Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter was lost at sea when it fell overboard from the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier. The Truman reportedly made a sharp turn to evade a Houthi attack, which caused the jet to plunge overboard. One sailor was injured in the chaos.

“After a month of Trump’s empty threats to annihilate us, I am responding to you, not from the afterlife, but from this worldly life, specifically from Al-Sab’een Square in the capital, Sana’a,” Nasruddin Amer, a Houthi spokesman, told The Intercept by direct message, calling Trump a laughingstock ahead of the announced ceasefire. 

Amer said that Houthi attacks had actually destroyed two F/A-18s. CENTCOM pushed back on this. “Houthis continue to communicate lies and disinformation,” an unnamed “defense official” told The Intercept. “Their messaging depends on lies.”

Amid the rising death toll in Yemen, some lawmakers have been pressing for an end to U.S. attacks. “We cannot bomb our way to peace. As someone who’s seen the human cost of war and displacement. I know we need a foreign policy rooted in human rights,” said Rep. Ilhan Omar on Tuesday as feminist leaders gathered on Capitol Hill to unveil the Feminist Peace Playbook, a foreign policy strategy that runs counter to Trump’s antagonistic approach.

Although he wasted little time in launching his own bombing campaign in Yemen this year, as a presidential candidate, Trump was critical of Biden administration attacks on the Houthis. “It’s crazy. You can solve problems over the telephone. Instead, they start dropping bombs. I see, recently, they’re dropping bombs all over Yemen. You don’t have to do that. You can talk in such a way where they respect you and they listen to you,” Trump said in a May 2024 interview with podcaster Tim Pool.

America’s enemies, specifically Iranian-backed militias, have been striking U.S. bases, intermittently, since the late 2010s. Regular tit-for-tat attacks began in January 2020 when Iran’s top general, Qassim Suleimani, was killed near the Baghdad airport in a U.S. drone strike authorized by Trump. Trump said the U.S. was “totally prepared” for Iran to retaliate — which it did by firing 22 ballistic missiles at two American bases in Iraq. “All is well!” Trump proclaimed in the wake of the attack, as the U.S. claimed no U.S. troops were killed or wounded. Weeks later, the Pentagon admitted that there were actually 109 U.S. casualties.

Recently, U.S. Central Command, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and the White House have orchestrated a casualty cover-up, refusing to disclose the number of U.S. troops killed or wounded in Houthi attacks. 

Under the Biden administration, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and CENTCOM provided detailed data on attacks on military bases across the Middle East — including to this reporter. CENTCOM provided the total number of attacks, breakdowns by country, and the total number injured. The Pentagon offered even more granular data, providing individual synopses of more than 150 attacks, including information on deaths and injuries not only to U.S. troops but even civilian contractors working on U.S. bases.

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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has declared war on whistleblowers inside the Pentagon — at the same time that new reports of his own lax operational security and repeated disclosures of highly classified information to people without security clearances keep emerging.

Current and former Defense Department officials and the ranking member of the Armed Services Committee called out Hegseth, in conversations with The Intercept, for hypocrisy and a lack of accountability.

A defense official who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, confirmed recent reporting by The Associated Press that Hegseth had a “dirty” internet connection in his office to use the Signal messaging app on a personal computer and bypass the Defense Department’s security protocols.

Chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell issued a non-denial denial to The Intercept, referencing only Hegseth’s Defense Department computer. “The Secretary of Defense’s use of communications systems and channels is classified,” said Parnell. “However, we can confirm that the Secretary has never used and does not currently use Signal on his government computer.”

The defense official said that Hegseth used multiple computers and phones even though personal electronic devices are generally banned, due to security vulnerabilities, from use inside the defense secretary’s office.

Another official said that the double standard at the Pentagon, where rank-and-file employees are suspected of leaks without cause while the chief shares classified attack plans with unauthorized civilians, had bred anger and discontent among staff. “I don’t mind telling you this now,” one official said. “I can’t say I really care too much anymore.”

Hegseth used Signal to share details about forthcoming strikes in Yemen on March 15 in a group chat — named “Defense | Team Huddle” — that included more than a dozen personal and professional contacts including his wife Jennifer, a former Fox News producer who does not work at the Pentagon. Also in the group were Hegseth’s brother Phil and Tim Parlatore, who serves as his personal lawyer; both have jobs with the Department of Defense. The Signal group also included many of Hegseth’s then-top aides, including Joe Kasper, his chief of staff; Dan Caldwell; and Darin Selnick.

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The chat reportedly revealed information also disclosed in a separate Signal chat that same day, which mistakenly included the editor of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg. Unlike the latter chat, the “Team Huddle” group was created by Hegseth, who shared classified information with people who had no reason to know sensitive attack plans.

“Accountability starts at the top. Secretary Hegseth has refused to take responsibility for his own mishandling of classified information, but has readily punished others for far less,” Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., an Army veteran and ranking member of the Armed Services Committee told The Intercept. “Hypocrisy and finger-pointing is no way to lead the U.S. military.”

Five current and former defense officials who spoke with The Intercept castigated Hegseth for the unauthorized disclosures. Four also drew specific attention to the defense secretary’s repeated efforts to root out other Pentagon officials who supposedly leak information.

Kasper, Hegseth’s former chief of staff, called out “unauthorized disclosures of national security information involving sensitive communications with principals within the Office of the Secretary of Defense” and threatened that parties found responsible would be “referred to the appropriate criminal law enforcement entity for criminal prosecution,” in a March memo.

“This is exactly what Hegseth did multiple times,” said one of the officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Kasper also threatened to use polygraph tests as part of the investigation of leaks. Less than a month later, news broke that Kasper was leaving his post, amid in-fighting and recriminations about unauthorized disclosures among Hegseth’s aides.

“Hegseth is even more unfit for the role of SecDef than we anticipated. In just a few weeks he has personally committed serious security breaches, denied this, and then refused accountability, and he has set the Pentagon and by extension the entire DoD into chaos,” said Wes Bryant, who until recently served as the chief of civilian harm assessments and senior analyst and adviser on precision warfare, targeting, and civilian harm mitigation at the Pentagon’s Civilian Protection Center of Excellence. “It was very clear to me that he would do exactly as he is doing: refusing to hold himself accountable to the very standards, conduct, and regulations that he is charged with holding the force to. But that is the Trump administration and current GOP norm now — they are above the law, and anything goes.”

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Hegseth blamed “disgruntled former employees” for revealing the second Signal chat group. Reports suggest this is a reference to four senior advisers who recently left the Defense Department. Three of them — Colin Carroll, Caldwell, and Selnick — were escorted out of the Pentagon and reportedly accused of leaking information to the press. They put out a joint statement on X questioning “if there was even a real investigation of ‘leaks’ to begin with.”

The fourth adviser, former Defense Department spokesperson John Ullyot, resigned earlier this month and then published an opinion piece detailing the depths of dysfunction at the Pentagon, including the peddling of lies by “Hegseth’s team.”

“Defense Department officials working for Hegseth tried to smear the aides anonymously to reporters, claiming they were fired for leaking sensitive information as part of an investigation ordered earlier this month,” Ullyot wrote. “Yet none of this is true. While the department said that it would conduct polygraph tests as part of the probe, not one of the three has been given a lie detector test. In fact, at least one of them has told former colleagues that investigators advised him he was about to be cleared officially of any wrongdoing.”

A former defense official, who was not authorized to talk to the press by his current employer, referred to the episode as a “full on shit show.”

Hegseth’s recent purge followed the February firings of top military officers, including former Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Charles Q. Brown and Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti.

The Defense Department refused to provide information about the number of “unauthorized disclosures” of national security information since January 20 and how many instances have been referred to law enforcement for “criminal prosecution” as threatened in Kasper’s March memo.

It remains unclear whether Hegseth will be held to account for his actions. Hegseth is currently under investigation for his use of Signal in sharing classified information with Goldberg and others. That inquiry is being conducted by Acting Inspector General Steven Stebbins because President Donald Trump fired Robert Storch from his Senate-confirmed Pentagon inspector general role as part of his firings of 17 inspectors general across the government in January.

Reed, the Rhode Island senator, has called for the inspector general to expand its investigation to include the “Defense | Team Huddle” chat. “He must immediately explain why he reportedly texted classified information that could endanger American servicemembers’ lives on a commercial app that included his wife, brother, and personal lawyer,” said Reed.

Hegseth’s personal phone number, which he used for his Signal chats, was recently available on WhatsApp and Facebook as well as Sleeper.com, a fantasy football and sports betting site, where he used the username “PeteHegseth.” Experts say that this puts his Signal account at high risk for targeting by hackers and foreign adversaries.

In response to a specific question by The Intercept about whether Hegseth’s disclosures of national security information have been referred to law enforcement for “criminal prosecution,” a Pentagon spokesperson demurred.  

“We won’t be able to provide anything on this topic at the moment,” the unnamed spokesperson replied by email.

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The Pentagon had been slowly dedicating more resources to killing fewer civilians in recent years, following a long drumbeat of damning investigations of civilian casualties by the press, nongovernmental organizations, government-supported think tanks, and even the U.S. military itself.

But now, under the control of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, the Department of Defense is reversing course.

The Intercept spoke with five current and former Defense Department officials familiar with its Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response, or CHMR, efforts, who say that the Pentagon is in the process of eliminating or downsizing offices, programs, and positions focused on preventing civilian casualties during U.S. combat operations.

On the chopping block are the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response office, which handles policies that reduce dangers to noncombatants, and the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence, which is focused on training and tools for preventing civilian casualties.

The Army also recently announced it will make law of war training — which covers basic battlefield ethics, prohibited acts, and rules of engagement — optional, in an effort to remove “unnecessary distractions” and increase focus on “decisive action in combat.” 

This comes as Hegseth trumpets an overwhelming emphasis on “lethality” and cuts to programs that run afoul of Trump administration priorities. Hegseth also reportedly plans to overhaul the entire JAG Corps, which is essential to ensuring adherence to the rule of law and upholding the Uniform Code of Military Justice, after firing the judge advocates general of the Army, Navy, and Air Force.

Trump has also rolled back constraints on American commanders to authorize airstrikes and Special Operations raids outside conventional battlefields, broadening the range of people who can be targeted. After Trump relaxed targeting principles during his first term, attacks and reports of civilian casualties in war zones like Somalia and Yemen spiked.

“There is an overt and ongoing effort to completely shut the Center down and to remove CHMR across all the commands,” said Wes Bryant, who until recently served as the chief of civilian harm assessments and senior analyst and adviser on precision warfare, targeting, and civilian harm mitigation at the Pentagon’s Civilian Protection Center of Excellence. “Basically, they are wiping DoD of anything related to Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response.”

The four other officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution or to preserve their ability to lobby behind the scenes, expressed varying levels of concern over how the demise of CHMR would affect combat operations and what Hegseth’s priorities might mean for the world. One of them mused that “lethality” might prove to be only meaningless jargon, but worried that it could indicate something far worse: eschewing military professionalism in favor of “wanton killing and wholesale destruction and disregard for law.”

CHMR-oriented personnel at combatant commands around the world will be shuffled into new roles, according to some of the officials. Central Command, or CENTCOM, which oversees military operations across the Middle East, pushed back on this when contacted by The Intercept, stating that the “CHMR team at CENTCOM will continue to provide civilian harm mitigation and assessment support to the command for the foreseeable future.”

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Several officials were hopeful that a concerted effort by advocates to preserve some CHMR work at the Pentagon and at combatant commands would allow harm mitigation efforts to endure within different structures and under different names. But even one of those former officials said that the CHMR enterprise was likely to end up “stillborn,” unable to even complete the phased implementation first laid out in the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan — written at the direction of then-Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin — that was released in 2022.

One official emphasized that CHMR’s core principles provide more benefits to the military than an overriding focus on lethality. “Shrinking or perverting it beyond recognition or getting rid of it altogether does a disservice to the men and women of the DoD and the institution itself, not to mention the American public,” that official said.

The Pentagon refuses to say whether Hegseth will rescind the CHMR instruction, which established the Pentagon’s policies, responsibilities, and procedures for mitigating and responding to noncombatant casualties. “We have no new announcements to make regarding office closures or changes to policy at this time,” an unnamed Pentagon spokesperson replied, by email, to repeated detailed questions.

“Dismantling these efforts would undermine years of work to learn from past mistakes and improve how the U.S. prevents and responds to civilian harm from its operations — work that actually began under the first Trump administration,” said Annie Shiel, the U.S. advocacy director at the Center for Civilians in Conflict. “Congress mandated many of these efforts through bipartisan legislation, and it must ensure that the programs it authorized and funded are not abandoned.”

Hegseth has made it clear that enhancing his department’s capacity to kill people is his number one priority. “Your job [as secretary] is to make sure that it’s lethality, lethality, lethality. Everything else is gone. Everything else that distracts from that shouldn’t be happening,” he said during his confirmation process. Since taking the helm at the Pentagon, Hegseth has doubled down. “We will revive the warrior ethos,” he announced. “We will remain the strongest and most lethal force in the world.”

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As a Fox News personality, Hegseth — a former Army National Guard officer who served in Afghanistan and Iraq — cast troops charged with war crimes as “heroes.” During Trump’s first term in office, Hegseth lobbied for pardons of Army Lt. Clint Lorance and Army Maj. Mathew Golsteyn, and championed Navy SEAL Edward Gallagher, each of whom was charged or convicted of war crimes committed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Trump granted pardons to Lorance and Golsteyn, and reversed a demotion of Gallagher, tagging Hegseth in a tweet announcing the review of one of the cases.

Hegseth takes a dim view of the Geneva Conventions, which form the foundation of the law of armed conflict, or LOAC, and remain the most important rules limiting the barbarity of war by protecting civilians, wounded combatants, and prisoners of war, among others. In his 2024 book, “The War on Warriors,” Hegseth asked, “Should we follow the Geneva conventions? … Aren’t we just better off in winning our wars according to our own rules?”

At his Senate confirmation hearing, Hegseth said that during his time in the military, “restrictive rules of engagement” briefed to him by a military lawyer, known as a JAG, made war-fighting more difficult. But rules of engagement, which provide instructions for the use of deadly force in military operations, are issued by a senior commander — not a JAG officer.

Bryant — who worked as a Special Operations joint terminal attack controller, or JTAC, and called in thousands of strikes against the Islamic State and other terrorist groups across the greater Middle East before serving as chief of civilian harm assessment — said that Hegseth has little grasp of the laws of war.

“In Hegseth, you have a Secretary of Defense who really does not understand LOAC. Every time I’ve heard him talking about his time in Afghanistan and the law of armed conflict, he’s talking about things that were not actually LOAC but policy,” said Bryant. “So, Hegseth blames all his experiences of being overly restricted in combat on military lawyers and LOAC — when the types of operational restrictions he has cited have nothing to do with lawyers, the law of armed conflict, or international law.”

the Signal Chat among senior Trump administration officials (and a journalist) discussing military strikes in Yemen revealed that the attack targeted a civilian residence in an effort to kill a Houthi target. It is one of more than 200 strikes conducted in Yemen by the Trump administration since the beginning of March, carried out in an attempt to force Houthi fighters to halt attacks on ships in the Red Sea, which the Houthis say is in response to Israel’s war in Gaza. Local Yemeni authorities say more than 50 civilians have been killed in the attacks.

(Hegseth is currently under investigation for his use of Signal, the end-to-end encrypted messaging app. That inquiry is being conducted by Acting Inspector General Steven Stebbins because Trump fired Robert Storch from his Senate-confirmed Pentagon inspector general role as part of his firings of 17 inspectors general across the government in January.)

Fifteen civilians were reportedly killed and at least 20 injured in strikes on March 15 and 16, alone, according to Airwars, the U.K.-based airstrike monitoring group. “In just two days of strikes under the new Trump administration, U.S. forces reportedly killed half the number of civilians killed in a full year of strikes under Biden,” the group reported.

These strikes were conducted with CENTCOM’s civilian harm mitigation and response officers still on the job. “The CHMR team at U.S. CENTCOM continues to be focused on their assigned tasks. There has been no change to their status or work focus,” a nameless “defense official” told The Intercept by email. “We do not anticipate the DoD CHMR effort at CENTCOM being shutdown at this point.”

Trump also recently posted a black-and-white video showing more than 70 people gathered in a circle. An explosion occurs during the 25-second video, leaving a massive crater. “These Houthis gathered for instructions on an attack,” Trump claimed, without offering a location or any other details about the strike. “Oops, there will be no attack by these Houthis!”

A former U.S. drone pilot and strike cell analyst, who served in the CENTCOM and Africa Command regions during the first Trump administration was skeptical of the vetting process that identified the targets in Trump’s video. “My suspicion is that it is very low. NAI — names, area of interest — and gatherings would be all that is required. This is not proper vetting, if this is what they are doing,” he told The Intercept on the condition of anonymity due to his nondisclosure agreements with the government. “Remember in his first term the whole of AFRICOM was shut down due to negligent strikes. They had multiple ‘missed’ strikes that killed civilians.”

After Trump relaxed targeting principles during his first term, attacks in Somalia tripled and U.S. military and independent counts of civilian casualties across U.S. war zones — including Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen — increased. Since taking office a second time, Trump again rolled back constraints on American commanders to authorize airstrikes and Special Operations raids outside conventional war zones.

During his first overseas trip as defense secretary, Hegseth met with senior AFRICOM leaders and signed a directive easing policy constraints and executive oversight on airstrikes. “The president and the secretary of defense have given me expanded authorities,” Gen. Michael Langley, the chief of AFRICOM recently told the Senate Armed Services Committee. “We’re hitting them hard. I now have the capability to hit them harder.”

A 2023 investigation by The Intercept found that one April 2018 attack on al-Shabaab militants in Somalia — conducted under Trump’s loosened rules — killed three, and possibly five, civilians, including 22-year-old Luul Dahir Mohamed and her 4-year-old daughter, Mariam Shilow Muse. At the time, AFRICOM announced it had killed “five terrorists” and that “no civilians were killed in this airstrike.”

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Secret Pentagon Investigation Found No One at Fault in Drone Strike That Killed Woman and 4-Year-Old

The Pentagon’s inquiry into the attack that killed Luul and Mariam found that the Americans who conducted the strike were confused and inexperienced and that they argued about basic details, like how many passengers were in the targeted vehicle. The U.S. strike cell members mistook a woman and a child for an adult male, killing Luul and Mariam in a follow-up attack as they ran from the truck in which they had hitched a ride to visit relatives. Despite this, the investigation — by the unit that conducted the strike — concluded that standard operating procedures and the rules of engagement were followed. No one was ever held accountable for the deaths. For more than six years, Luul and Mariam’s family has tried to contact the U.S. government, including through an online civilian casualty reporting portal run by AFRICOM, but did not receive a response.

When asked how the demise of CHMR would affect AFRICOM operations, spokesperson Kelly Cahalan punted. “CHMR is an OSD policy,” she told The Intercept, referring to the Office of the Secretary of Defense. “We aren’t going to speculate about potential policy changes.”

Multiple sources, speaking on background, said that CENTCOM chief Gen. Michael “Erik” Kurilla had specifically advocated for civilian harm mitigation efforts, which the Washington Post previously reported, purportedly telling others that his CHMR officers were an integral part of the command’s operations. CENTCOM refused to offer comment. “We have nothing to provide you on this,” a “defense official” wrote in an email.

Some experts worry that the pending demise of CHMR, the firings of the judge advocates general, and loosened rules of engagement for drone strikes and commando raids is part of a broader push to shunt aside ethics and accountability across the military.

“We’re seeing a dramatic reversal of progress across the armed forces, which will ultimately undermine the United States’ strategic goals. Military success isn’t measured by the number of people the armed forces kill; it’s measured by winning carefully-planned battles designed to achieve a strategic military goal without causing needless destruction,” Daphne Eviatar, the director of the Security With Human Rights program at Amnesty International USA, told The Intercept. “By emphasizing lethality and eliminating training on the laws of war, loosening rules of engagement and firing anyone with power to exercise oversight over U.S. armed forces, the U.S. is setting up its own warfighters to fail.”

Bryant voiced similar concerns about where the potential demise of CHMR efforts would ultimately lead. “I do worry about the direction that Hegseth and the Trump administration are going after this first step of dissolving the CHMR enterprise. Is this administration now going to try to change the warfighting culture and doctrinal standards of the U.S. military, and have us executing our next conflict more like Israel has carried out in Gaza?” he asked. “If we do get into a large-scale conflict — whether in Europe or China or elsewhere — will we not care one way or another about the civilian populace? Will our current low tolerance for civilian casualties and historically conservative application of ‘proportionality’ under international law be completely reversed?”

The post Pete Hegseth Is Gutting Pentagon Programs to Reduce Civilian Casualties appeared first on The Intercept.

This post was originally published on The Intercept.

The Pentagon is considering scrapping key regulations intended to address sexual assault within the military, according to a memorandum obtained by The Intercept. Advocates for sexual violence prevention and awareness in the armed forces argue that removing these rules would not only potentially violate federal law, it would also have a “chilling effect” on survivors. 

On February 19, President Donald Trump issued an executive order directing federal agencies, in coordination with Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, to review and potentially cancel regulations that the administration might deem unconstitutional, that inhibit innovation, or are too onerous to small businesses, among other grab-bag categories.

In response to Trump’s order “Ensuring Lawful Governance and Implementing the President’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ Deregulatory Initiative,” Deputy Secretary of Defense Stephen Feinberg called on top officials at more than a dozen Defense Department agencies. Feinberg ordered them to comb through their organizations’ regulations — identified in a spreadsheet attached to the memo — and specify whether any rules flagged in the executive order apply to them and indicate whether they should be altered or rescinded.

One of the regulations under review created the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response program and the Sexual Assault Prevention and Reporting Office, which oversees the SAPR program. SAPR provides military survivors of sexual assault with mental and physical heath care services, advocacy services, and legal assistance. In addition to offering support to victims, the program also provides trainings on how to prevent sexual assault and collects data on sexual violence within the military.

The program and the office implementing it emerged from a 2005 Department of Defense initiative looking into sexual violence in the military. Later that year they were effectively codified by the National Defense Authorization Act, which required the military to create a victims services program. The program was expanded by the 2006 NDAA, with more oversight provided to Congress. Ever since, the Pentagon has been required to provide a comprehensive report on sexual violence and the efforts it is taking to prevent it to Congress. 

Experts in military sexual violence argue that while the program is far from perfect, losing it would set justice for survivors back decades. They also raised legal concerns over any efforts to potentially shutter the program, noting that it’s mandated by Congress.

“Framing this like another pointless initiative is dangerous,” said Erin Kirk-Cuomo, co-founder of Not In My Marine Corps, a group of current and former service members working to end sexual violence in the military. “It’s a misunderstanding of number one, the law, and also the lived reality of what it is to be a sexual assault and harassment survivor in a military uniform.”

Kirk-Cuomo said that without SAPR, armed forces culture would revert to the days of the “Tailhook” scandal: an infamous incident of mass sexual violence in the military that sparked national outrage and action. She fears a return to a time when “sexual assault survivors are ignored, inappropriately discharged to silence them, and at worst, pushed into self-harm.”

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In U.S. Military, Sexual Assault Against Men Is Vastly Underreported

Even with these regulations in place, sexual violence remains underreported in the military, especially among male service members, said Kirk-Cuomo. The military estimates that in 2023, roughly 29,000 military personnel were sexually assaulted. But research from Brown University suggests that the real number is likely 2.5 times higher than estimated. 

A 2021 investigation by The Intercept found that sexual assault of U.S. military personnel in Africa was far more common and widespread than the Pentagon reported to Congress.

Between 2010 and 2020, the Pentagon’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office counted 73 cases of sexual assault in the U.S. Africa Command, or AFRICOM, area of operations. Yet criminal investigation files, obtained by The Intercept via the Freedom of Information Act, show that military criminal investigators logged at least 158 allegations of sexual offenses in Africa during that same period. The case files also revealed that charges of sexual misconduct involving U.S. military personnel occurred in at least 22 countries in Africa, including 13 nations that did not appear in annual Defense Department reports.

This isn’t the first time the Trump administration has hinted at dismantling SAPR. Earlier this year, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and military leadership rolled out cuts to several SAPR programs, which they later walked back. 

Kirk-Cuomo said it isn’t shocking that Hegseth in particular, would have it out for SAPR. “He’s exactly the type of service member who consistently marginalizes the voice of survivors,” she said. Hegseth faced allegations that he sexually assaulted a woman in 2017. He denied it, saying it was consensual. No charges were filed. He has acknowledged paying a settlement to his accuser.

The spreadsheet of regulations under review was developed by the Office of the Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Privacy, Civil Liberties, and Transparency, according to Pentagon spokesperson Eric Pahon. Among those tasked with conducting reviews of their regulations include the under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness, which oversees the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office; the Office of the Inspector General, the Defense Department’s watchdog; and the departments of the Army, Navy, and Air Force.

Feinberg directed officials to complete their review and submit their recommendations by close of business April 18, so it’s too early to tell which regulations might ultimately wind up on the chopping block.

The regulations under review run the gamut, from providing protections to vulnerable individuals and groups to rules necessary to shield national security and safeguard taxpayers from fraud and abuse. These include regulations governing the protection of human subjects in biomedical research, assistance to victims and witnesses of crimes, and defense contracting. The memo comes as Pentagon leadership makes life more difficult for marginalized communities serving in the U.S. military, going so far as to temporarily erase the achievements of nonwhite service members, including Jackie Robinson, from their website.

The Pentagon would not clarify when final determinations on rules to be modified or terminated would take place. “All reviews and decisions on those regulations will be made in accordance with EO 14219,” Pahon told The Intercept, referring to Trump’s February 19 executive order.

Josh Connolly, senior vice president of Protect Our Defenders, said it seems as if the Trump administration is conflating “wokeness” with sexual violence prevention, an issue that impacts service members of all genders. “Just taking him at his word, he doesn’t want women to serve in combat roles. Sounds like [Hegseth] thinks they’ve gotten unfair treatment to their benefit and to the detriment of men in the military,” he said. “And so through that lens, I’m concerned.” 

Connolly pointed out that a key part of the regulation requires the military to track incidents of sexual violence, a vital part of taking this issue seriously. “They would truly be sweeping this issue under the rug,” he said, “and it would send a profoundly chilling message to survivors of sexual assault, harassment without question.”

Ultimately, the responsibility to protect this program lies with Congress, said Connolly.

“Congress must play a role in this, because they help set up and stand up this office to begin with,” he said. “This is happening on their watch.”

The post Pentagon Considers Cutting Its Sexual Assault Rules appeared first on The Intercept.

This post was originally published on The Intercept.

As protests against Elon Musk proliferated at Tesla dealerships, law enforcement analysts quietly warned of a threat from “violent opportunists” — and from the cars themselves.

In California, intelligence analysts said opportunists might exploit peaceful gatherings “to mask criminal intentions, including vandalism, arson, or other disruptive acts.” In Nevada, analysts said that electric cars lit on fire posed a risk of toxic gases and self-sustaining “thermal runaway.”

Documents released Thursday by a transparency nonprofit show that law enforcement officials have trained a microscope on demonstrations against Musk in the past month.

Ryan Shapiro, co-founder of the group Property of the People, said the intelligence reports show law enforcement twisting itself into pretzels to avoid the obvious.

“Law enforcement has a messaging problem. They want to portray anti-Musk sentiment as terroristic, but they simultaneously know just how popular and mainstream anti-Musk sentiment actually is,” he said in an email.

All the documents include a nod toward free speech and free assembly rights, sometimes in the form of a “First Amendment Acknowledgement.” Shapiro dismissed that as nothing more than boilerplate.

“Generic First Amendment language is a common pretense in intelligence documents about surveilling dissent,” he said. “It’s akin to writing, ‘Nothing in this surveillance report about you should be understood as spying on you.’”

Two of the reports obtained by his group were produced by state fusion or intelligence centers, which were created after the September, 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Those fusion centers were supposed to provide local law enforcement a way to receive updates from the feds on terrorist threats and report back suspicious activity. Activists said they quickly turned into hubs of surveillance on nonviolent domestic protest.

Shapiro, who has collected similar bulletins for years, says they often inform the thinking of front-line police chiefs and officers.

Days before FBI Director Kash Patel equated vandalism of Teslas with “domestic terrorism,” an intelligence center in California warned law enforcement about “violent opportunists.”

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The Northern California Regional Intelligence Center noted that swastikas had been painted onto Tesla charging stations in San Ramon. Someone vandalized parked Tesla vehicles in the East Bay with the word “Nazi.” And someone else threw paint during a protest.

The March 21 report pointed to scattered examples of arsons and shootings at Tesla dealerships across the country, none involving bodily injury.

“Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s visible support for Donald Trump and his involvement in the administration as Head of DOGE has likely made Tesla facilities and vehicles symbolically larger targets,” the report states.

It continues, “Most activities organized to speak against Tesla have been peaceful and protected under the First Amendment. However, violent opportunists may exploit these gatherings to mask criminal intentions, including vandalism, arson, or other disruptive acts.”

Separately, the Southern Nevada Counter Terrorism Center and Nevada Threat Analysis Center issued their own joint bulletin warning about the fire threat from electric vehicles on March 13.

While an Army veteran shot himself inside a Tesla Cybertruck that exploded in front of the Trump hotel in Las Vegas on New Year’s Day, the bulletin does not mention that highly publicized incident.

Rather, it focuses on the “emerging trend of threat actors encouraging acts of violence against electric vehicles, manufacturers, and associated charging infrastructure in the United States,” without mentioning Musk by name, including the threat of exploding Teslas.

Separately, the FBI partnered with the Department of Homeland Security on a March 21 intelligence bulletin.

The document stated that there had been incidents involving “arson, gunfire, and vandalism, including graffiti expressing grievances against those the perpetrators perceive to be racists, fascists, or political opponents.”

The FBI-DHS report warned of lumping “constitutionally protected activity” in with “preoperational planning associated with violence.”

All the anti-Tesla crimes appeared to have been committed by “lone offenders,” the report stated — a conclusion at odds with Trump’s claim that billionaire George Soros might have been behind “coordinated” attacks on Tesla.

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If Protesting Tesla Is Domestic Terrorism, Then What Demonstration Against Musk Isn’t

The careful language in the intelligence bulletins about free speech has not been echoed by top officials in the Trump administration, who have issued fearmongering statements that do not draw a distinction between protest and violence, echoing the president himself.

When Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, explicitly called for “nonviolent” actions at a March 19 “Tesla Takedown” protest, Attorney General Pam Bondi responded with a warning for her to “tread very carefully.”

Four days before a planned nationwide protest at Tesla dealerships, meanwhile, Patel announced that he was forming a special FBI task force.

“The FBI has been investigating the increase in violent activity toward Tesla, and over the last few days, we have taken additional steps to crack down and coordinate our response,” Patel said. “This is domestic terrorism. Those responsible will be pursued, caught, and brought to justice.”

The post Police Across the Country Are on High Alert Over Tesla Protests appeared first on The Intercept.

This post was originally published on The Intercept.

As protests against Elon Musk proliferated at Tesla dealerships, law enforcement analysts quietly warned of a threat from “violent opportunists” — and from the cars themselves.

In California, intelligence analysts said opportunists might exploit peaceful gatherings “to mask criminal intentions, including vandalism, arson, or other disruptive acts.” In Nevada, analysts said that electric cars lit on fire posed a risk of toxic gases and self-sustaining “thermal runaway.”

Documents released Thursday by a transparency nonprofit show that law enforcement officials have trained a microscope on demonstrations against Musk in the past month.

Ryan Shapiro, co-founder of the group Property of the People, said the intelligence reports show law enforcement twisting itself into pretzels to avoid the obvious.

“Law enforcement has a messaging problem. They want to portray anti-Musk sentiment as terroristic, but they simultaneously know just how popular and mainstream anti-Musk sentiment actually is,” he said in an email.

All the documents include a nod toward free speech and free assembly rights, sometimes in the form of a “First Amendment Acknowledgement.” Shapiro dismissed that as nothing more than boilerplate.

“Generic First Amendment language is a common pretense in intelligence documents about surveilling dissent,” he said. “It’s akin to writing, ‘Nothing in this surveillance report about you should be understood as spying on you.’”

Two of the reports obtained by his group were produced by state fusion or intelligence centers, which were created after the September, 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Those fusion centers were supposed to provide local law enforcement a way to receive updates from the feds on terrorist threats and report back suspicious activity. Activists said they quickly turned into hubs of surveillance on nonviolent domestic protest.

Shapiro, who has collected similar bulletins for years, says they often inform the thinking of front-line police chiefs and officers.

Days before FBI Director Kash Patel equated vandalism of Teslas with “domestic terrorism,” an intelligence center in California warned law enforcement about “violent opportunists.”

Related

“How to Blow Up a Pipeline” Movie Poses Terror Threat, Kansas City Intel Agency Claims

The Northern California Regional Intelligence Center noted that swastikas had been painted onto Tesla charging stations in San Ramon. Someone vandalized parked Tesla vehicles in the East Bay with the word “Nazi.” And someone else threw paint during a protest.

The March 21 report pointed to scattered examples of arsons and shootings at Tesla dealerships across the country, none involving bodily injury.

“Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s visible support for Donald Trump and his involvement in the administration as Head of DOGE has likely made Tesla facilities and vehicles symbolically larger targets,” the report states.

It continues, “Most activities organized to speak against Tesla have been peaceful and protected under the First Amendment. However, violent opportunists may exploit these gatherings to mask criminal intentions, including vandalism, arson, or other disruptive acts.”

Separately, the Southern Nevada Counter Terrorism Center and Nevada Threat Analysis Center issued their own joint bulletin warning about the fire threat from electric vehicles on March 13.

While an Army veteran shot himself inside a Tesla Cybertruck that exploded in front of the Trump hotel in Las Vegas on New Year’s Day, the bulletin does not mention that highly publicized incident.

Rather, it focuses on the “emerging trend of threat actors encouraging acts of violence against electric vehicles, manufacturers, and associated charging infrastructure in the United States,” without mentioning Musk by name, including the threat of exploding Teslas.

Separately, the FBI partnered with the Department of Homeland Security on a March 21 intelligence bulletin.

The document stated that there had been incidents involving “arson, gunfire, and vandalism, including graffiti expressing grievances against those the perpetrators perceive to be racists, fascists, or political opponents.”

The FBI-DHS report warned of lumping “constitutionally protected activity” in with “preoperational planning associated with violence.”

All the anti-Tesla crimes appeared to have been committed by “lone offenders,” the report stated — a conclusion at odds with Trump’s claim that billionaire George Soros might have been behind “coordinated” attacks on Tesla.

Related

If Protesting Tesla Is Domestic Terrorism, Then What Demonstration Against Musk Isn’t

The careful language in the intelligence bulletins about free speech has not been echoed by top officials in the Trump administration, who have issued fearmongering statements that do not draw a distinction between protest and violence, echoing the president himself.

When Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, explicitly called for “nonviolent” actions at a March 19 “Tesla Takedown” protest, Attorney General Pam Bondi responded with a warning for her to “tread very carefully.”

Four days before a planned nationwide protest at Tesla dealerships, meanwhile, Patel announced that he was forming a special FBI task force.

“The FBI has been investigating the increase in violent activity toward Tesla, and over the last few days, we have taken additional steps to crack down and coordinate our response,” Patel said. “This is domestic terrorism. Those responsible will be pursued, caught, and brought to justice.”

The post Police Across the Country Are on High Alert Over Tesla Protests appeared first on The Intercept.

This post was originally published on The Intercept.

The two men who carried out apparent terror attacks on New Year’s Day — killing 15 people by plowing a pickup truck into a crowd of New Year’s revelers in New Orleans, and detonating a Tesla Cybertruck outside a Trump hotel in Las Vegas — both had U.S. military backgrounds, according to the Pentagon. 

From 1990 to 2010, about seven persons per year with U.S. military backgrounds committed extremist crimes. Since 2011, that number has jumped to almost 45 per year, according to data from a new, unreleased report shared with The Intercept by Michael Jensen, the research director at the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, or START, at the University of Maryland.

Military service is also the single strongest individual predictor of becoming a “mass casualty offender,” far outpacing mental health issues, according to a separate study of extremist mass casualty violence by the researchers.

From 1990 through 2023, 730 individuals with U.S. military backgrounds committed criminal acts that were motivated by their political, economic, social, or religious goals, according to data from the new START report. From 1990 to 2022, successful violent plots that included perpetrators with a connection to the U.S. military resulted in 314 deaths and 1,978 injuries — a significant number of which came from the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

In the latest attacks, the FBI identified 42-year-old Shamsud-Din Jabbar as the man who rammed a pickup into New Year’s revelers on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, early on Wednesday morning. At least 15 people were killed and 35 more were injured.

The U.S. Army said Jabbar served as a human resource specialist and an information technology specialist between 2007 and 2020. His service included a deployment to Afghanistan from February 2009 to January 2010. A staff sergeant at the end of his service, Jabbar was “inspired by” the Islamic State terrorist organization, according to a short address by President Joe Biden on Wednesday night, who added that, in videos posted to social media shortly before the attack, Jabbar indicated that he had a “desire to kill.” The FBI said it did not believe he was solely responsible for the attack and said the investigation was “live.”

Authorities are also investigating whether the terrorist attack in New Orleans is linked to the Cybertruck explosion in Las Vegas which killed the attacker, Matthew Livelsberger, and wounded seven bystanders. The U.S. Army told The Intercept that Master Sgt. Matthew Alan Livelsberger served in the active-duty Army from January 2006 to March 2011, then served in the National Guard from March 2011 to July 2012, followed by a stint in the Army Reserve from July 2012 to December 2012. That same month, he rejoined the Army, serving as a U.S. Army Special Operations Soldier.

Livelsberger was assigned to U.S. Army Special Operations Command and still serving in the military, though on approved leave, at the time of his death.

In the years 1990 to 2022, 170 individuals with U.S. military backgrounds plotted 144 individual mass casualty terrorist attacks in the United States, according to START research using the Profiles of Individual Radicalization in the United States, or PIRUS, database, which includes information on more than 3,000 subjects who committed extremist crimes in America. These troops and veterans represent approximately one-quarter of all individuals who plotted mass casualty extremist attacks during this span, outstripping their representation in the U.S. population.

Jensen and his colleagues found that while military personnel and veterans are not more likely to radicalize to the point of violence than members of the general public, when service members and veterans do become radicalized, “they may be more likely to plan for, or commit, mass casualty crimes, thus having an outsized impact on public safety.”

The researchers also determined that subjects “in PIRUS with U.S. military backgrounds are 2.41 times more likely to be classified as mass casualty offenders than individuals who did not serve in the armed forces.” This means that U.S. military service is a more reliable predictor for becoming a mass casualty offender than mental health issues, being a lone offender, or having a pre-radicalization criminal history.

Most mass casualty offenders with U.S. military backgrounds in PIRUS (73.5 percent) were associated with far-right domestic extremist groups and movements. Approximately 15 percent (24 offenders) were inspired by or connected to foreign Islamist extremist groups, such as Al Qaeda and its affiliates (9 subjects) or the Islamic State or ISIS (13 subjects). 

Law enforcement sources confirmed to local news outlets that Livelsberger’s weaponized Tesla Cybertruck was rented from Turo, the vehicle-sharing service that was also used in the New Orleans attack. Jabbar reportedly used the Turo app as well to rent the electric Ford pickup truck used in that attack.

Both Livelsberger and Jabbar spent time at the military base formerly known as Fort Bragg and now called Fort Liberty, a massive Army garrison in North Carolina that is home to multiple Army Special Operations units. It does not, however, appear that their assignments to the base overlapped.

Fort Liberty is, however, an exceptionally troubled Army base. Investigations found, for example, that 109 soldiers assigned there died in 2020 and 2021. Ninety-six percent of those deaths took place stateside. Fewer than 20 were from natural causes. The remaining soldier fatalities, including macabre or unexplained deaths, homicides, and dozens of drug overdoses, were preventable.

Seventy-six of the 170 mass casualty offenders (44.7 percent) in PIRUS with military backgrounds served in the Army. These soldiers and veterans represent more than half (52.4 percent) of all Army-affiliated individuals represented in the data, which is the highest ratio of mass casualty to non-mass casualty offenders for any one military service branch. By comparison, 32 percent of the individuals represented in the data who served in the Marine Corps were mass casualty offenders.

“The Army is a vast organization with all kinds of different people and all kinds of different training and experiences,” said Joel A. Dvoskin, a clinical and forensic psychologist and an expert on violence, who cautioned against drawing any early conclusions about the relationship between the attacks and the attackers’ military service records. He said data on the relationship between military service and mass casualty attacks should only be used for beneficial purposes, like smoothing the transition from military to civilian life.

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